Mar 3, 2009

I was reading Jezebel yesterday and they were all up in arms about this photo parody because the male comedians aren't nude and are wearing body suits and men should be equally objectified just as women are and made to pose nude to further their career and DOWN WITH THE PATRIARCY WAHWAHWAHWAH!

I didn't see it as a gender issue but a body size issue, would Americans really want to see doughy Jonah Hill's naked ass? Besides Jezebel fails to make note of all the other photo fashion shoots in which men are naked and objectified just as women in a wide array of fashion magazines. So this whole OMG THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES AGAIN bullshit is just lame. Because its not like men aren't EVER nude in magazines, its just that when they are, they have really hot bodies that fit some mainstream definition of what an attractive male's body is supposed to look like.

Granted their making a direct comparison to the original Vanity Fair cover which honestly I find nothing sexual about it, nudity doesn't always equal sex, Scarlett and Keira look like muses that were rendered in paintings from centuries ago, its not a Maxim style shot.

Anyway I thought the parody was strengthened by their use of body suits and you could argue that making them wear body suits further de-sexualizes people who don't fit the mainstream definition of beauty and having the perfect body. So its not all about putting down women, there is some element of putting down men who don't have model type bodies by needing to cover up fat.